Tonearm adjustments on the fly

Every manufacturer making everything, no matter what it is, they constantly choose between performance and other values like convenience and features. You want a lot of features, be prepared to spend big time, and probably never get the performance you would get for less if only you could realize those features just aren't that big a deal.

Get on the fly VTA, and call it good. 

By the way am I the only one who sees "easy adjustments of VTA, SRA, azimuth, and such" and thinks, "This guy doesn't know VTA and SRA are the same adjustment"? And such. Just get VTA. Eventually when you've figured it out you will thank me.

mechanical complexity can also be compromise. the more adjustments involved, the higher the material quality and precision requirements for the same level of performance. no free lunches.

some of my earlier arms did have VTA adjustment on the fly including some mentioned. my current arms are better performing (i prefer them) but can’t do that. the exception was my Rockport Sirius III linear tracker; but it’s build quality was off the charts.

bearing towers need to be rock solid.

the point i’m making is that beware of buying features without considering the whole picture. is VTA important? yes critical. what is the net performance result of on-the-fly VTA adjustment capability on a particular arm? does it exact a cost?

i suppose it comes down to your expectations for arm performance.

Great, extremely knowledgeable, and helpful comments. Thank you. Millercarbon, like you, I always assumed that VTA and SRA were the same, then the other day while I was looking at the Acoustical Systems Smartstylus, I saw this, which caused me some confusion:

"VTA is a different animal than SRA
and requires a different setting for precise
measurement.
While the SRA is an angle depending on the
position of the stylus in the record’s groove, the
VTA refers to the angle between the record’s
surface as the long leg (long cathetus) of a right
angle triangle, the actual suspension bracket of
the cantilever inside the cartridge as one end of
the hypotenuse (and this point with a vertical
line down to the record’s surface being the
short leg) and the stylus tip the other end of the
hypotenuse.
Thus the cantilever is NOT parallel or in-line
with the desired VTA.
While the cantilever may be used as a mere
helping line, the VTA is to be determined from
the tip of your stylus towards the suspension
point in the cartridge in relation to the record’s
surface."

Chakster, that's a very nice 3P. I've had my eyes on them for awhile now.

Williewonka (Steve), it's very exciting to hear about the Audiomods arm. I'm going to look into it. I like the price!

Mike Lavigne, I've always admired your system and your knowledge and experience. Thanks for contributing here. I'm assuming you are referring to the Durand (at least in part). I'll look into that once again.

VTA and SRA are different technically, and in audio you will find incredibly tedious and impressively pedantic polemics explaining in excruciating detail why they are not the same. Functionally however when you adjust VTA you adjust SRA, and vice versa. One more thing people who understand a lot less than they think love to throw at noobs to keep them from leapfrogging them, something you will have no problem whatsoever doing, provided only you listen to me and not them.

This is all so freaking simple you have no idea. Nor will you, not for many years (if even then), if you keep on reading drivel like what you pasted above. The problem with that kind of stuff, it takes me ten pages to explain why you should never have read it in the first place. Ten pages that could have been spent going forward instead of correcting mistakes from the past.

Oh, sorry, there is one thing I did miss that should be fixed. The two things you want in an arm are VTA on the fly and a hard wired integral phono lead. Cartridge output is the faintest in all of audio. The last thing you want is a delicate signal going through a lot of connections. So hard wired phono lead, no detachable arm wands or head shells.